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Portraits from the Artists New York
Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium, Frick Collection Museum
01/18/2026 -
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Ten Preludes, Opus 23
Frédéric Chopin: Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Opus 52
Franz Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor, S. 178
Boris Giltburg (Pianist) 
B. Giltburg (© Giselle Katz)
“What is Music? How do you define it? Music is a calm moonlit night, the rustle of leaves in Summer. Music is the far off peal of bells at dusk!”
Sergei Rachmaninoff
“My sole ambition as a composer is to hurl my javelin into the infinite space of the future.”
Franz Liszt
How unfair to pair 100 minutes of a pianist, no matter how deft, with a previous hour roaming through the Frick Collection miracle. A mere two floors above the Stephen A. Schwarzman Concert Hall, one salivates over the most ravishing paintings.
Lots of Rembrandts, Vermeer’s famous Officer and Laughing Girl, the seascapes of Turner, plenty of Holbeins, Franz Hals’ jolly obese Dutch‑men and women. And as a dog‑lover, Drouais’ Chevalier’s Children with their Dog.
All the illustrious paintings cheek by jowl in the endless rooms of a Gilded Age tycoon! How can music compete with that?
Actually, the Russian-born Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg made us forget the Frick’s paintings at times–at times. For he is unquestionably a virtuoso of the first order. Not a single Presto of the Rachmaninoff Preludes eluded him. No volcanic measures of Chopin’s Ballade, nor the fugue of the Liszt Sonata was above his grasp.
Add to this the soft-spoken personal introductions by the pianist, fine acoustics and a reverently silent audience of the Schwarzman Auditorium. All of it merging to overcome the lousy news and the lousier weather.
That didn’t quite happen. Mr. Giltburg was sporadic in the Rachmaninoff. Those Ten Preludes from the Russian Romantic never quite hung together, and the pianist was irregular in the performance.
This was an admirably “natural” performance, though one needs more than that. The first Prelude was a fine‑textured performance. But nowhere was the nuance of mystery. The next Maestoso was given a martial push, yet one rarely heard so pointed measure.
That 5th Prelude is rightly famed for its march, and Mr. Giltburg offered a step‑by‑step little march procession. The other Preludes were magnificently fingered and pedaled. Yet the emotions, from elegant to fiery, became well‑set varied jewels. They glittered, bounced and at times, in the 9th Presto were worthy of great admiration.
Never mawkish or sentimental, worthy of great respect rather than reverence.
Drouais’ Chevalier’s Children Dressed as Savoyards with their Dog
(© Courtesy of Frick Collection)
Boris Giltburg is especially famed for his Rachmaninoff, but the High Romantics are very prominent in his programs. Thus the second half opened with the Chopin Fourth Ballade. This time, I expected–and was satisfied–with a well‑organized painting of an explosive work. That was the result. Hardly clinical, yet somehow literal, objective.
Giltburg’s grand finale–oh, hell, anybody’s grand finale–was of course the Liszt Sonata. It is played frequently in New York (the last time was in October). Yet with the right virtuoso it becomes more and more wonderful, inscrutable, an exemplar of both inspiration and quantum cosmology.
Mr. Giltburg set the stage for this Colossus by sitting still for, what seemed like, two minutes. And then came those octave G’s which transfigured themselves like an insoluble puzzle.
The entire work was played with transparency, with care, without even a nuance of mania. Yet if one thought it was too proper, this writer is utterly moved by all pianists capable of is challenges.
On the subway, I met a persnickety concertgoer, who sneered, when I told how moved. Still, Mr. Giltburg played with poignant care, with the ineluctable changes, and with an artist’s deference rather than demonization.
An encore of Schumann’s Arabesque was pretty enough. But the Liszt keyboard behemoth needed no further piano. Outside, the weather was slushy, misty, rainy, snowy. Yet thoughts of Boris Giltburg’s Liszt created an aural aureole over 70th Street. And that was sufficient.
Harry Rolnick
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